For Abengoa Solar, innovation and the development of new technologies are key priorities. The company’s goal is to offer technologies that generate clean energy at a cost that can compete with fossil fuels.
The solar energy sector is a relatively young and highly technology-dependent industry. Innovation is therefore a key factor, enabling the emergence of better technologies capable of competing with fossil fuels on price (taking account of carbon dioxide emission costs). Two main drivers will combine to lower costs: increased market volume and more efficient new technologies. This is precisely where innovation has a vital role to play.
Abengoa Solar’s development of proprietary technology within its research and development department affords it a competitive edge. This fact is particularly significant given the company’s role at various different stages of the value chain: manufacturing technological components, operating as a plant developer and maintaining assets, inter alia.
Abengoa Solar’s unflinching commitment to research, development and innovation is thus characterized by:
In 2010, the R&D&I team continued to grow, further honing its capabilities in its core research areas and building pilot facilities to put new technologies to the test at a small scale but under real operating conditions.
Abengoa Solar operated several demonstration plants over the year to showcase its strategy in the field of new technologies. The company develops and tests its technologies at small-scale pilot plants with a view to subsequent application using large commercial facilities.
Abengoa Solar develops its technology research and innovation via the Stage-Gate methodology so as to achieve excellence in project development and management, and to bring its efforts into alignment with the organization’s strategic goals. Under this R&D&I management procedure, projects evolve by consecutive stages (Stages), subject to assessment milestones (Gates) at which the company assesses the extent to which it has achieved its objectives and overall project potential.
At the initial stage, the project to be undertaken is defined and preliminary research work completed. Next, the team conducts a thorough analysis and theoretical and practical modeling of the solution. This stage also includes searching for suppliers, signing cooperation agreements, and so on. At the next stage, a prototype or demonstration plant is built and brought into operation. The final stage consists of analyzing the pilot plant’s operational data in order to validate the demonstrated system with a view to undertaking large-scale commercial development.
Pilot plants help Abengoa Solar to face emerging technological challenges, which can currently be described as (i) raising the efficiency of converting solar energy into electricity, and (ii) bringing down costs. Specifically, pilot plants enable the company to test the following features:
Parabolic trough demonstration plant hybridized with a coal-fired thermal plant in Colorado, USA
In response to these challenges, the company has continued to operate several pilot plants as part of the Solucar platform (Sanlucar la Mayor, Seville, Spain) over the course of 2010. The projects have validated a range of key innovative concepts:
.As with CSP technology, PV technology faces the challenge of developing systems that generate power at a cost that can compete with both other renewables and conventional sources.
Aerial view of the Solucar platform (Seville, Spain), with some of the R&D&I facilities visible
Developing and operating certain efficient PV technologies represent an important goal for Abengoa Solar. In 2010, the company carried out the following projects:
As a result of this R&D&I work, Abengoa Solar now owns patent-protected proprietary technology. The company owns rights to exploit a number of major inventions in the solar industry, making for 25 patent applications in 2010.
The research and development program in the Solar’s business unit rests on four main pillars:
Abengoa Solar’s research focus on central receiver and tower technology is what sets it apart from its competitors.
One of the internationally recognized hallmarks of Abengoa Solar is to use tower and heliostat technologies in its quest for efficiency, particularly in the solar component of the plant.
In 2010, besides operating the Eureka plant for the production of superheated steam, the company undertook research and development relating to one of the main components of a solar plant: The receiver.
The Eureka project was intended to address new challenges in tower technology, now that the start-up of PS20 has amply confirmed its reliability. This second-generation solar tower achieves higher temperatures by producing superheated steam, thus enhancing the overall efficiency of the steam cycle. The plant consists of 35 heliostats and a 50 m tower mounting the experimental superheating receiver. The approximate power of the plant is 3 MWth.
In the field of tower technology, the company’s research and development was not confined to steam. Two new projects were initiated in 2009 to focus on two very different fluids: Molten salts and air.
The CRS Molten Salt project, co-financed by the Spanish CDTI, involves the engineering and manufacture of a tower solar receiver prototype in which the heat-carrying fluid is a mixture of molten salts. The purpose of the exercise is to appraise the technical and economic viability of a large-scale plant based on this technology.
In addition, the Solugas project (co-financed by the European Union’s Seventh Framework Program), got underway in 2008 and is intended to demonstrate the functioning of tower technology at higher temperatures, employing air as the heat-carrying fluid and a gas cycle instead of steam.
The engineering phase has been taken forward in both projects, with a view to starting construction of demonstration facilities in the near future.
In 2010, the company has developed a new heliostat that is set to reduce costs by almost 30 %.
Eureka, a high temperature tower technology pilot plant which has been operational since 2009 at the Solucar platform, Seville
Parabolic trough technology offers great potential for improvement in a wide range of its components, including its structure, mirror-fixing methods, tubing and interconnections. Abengoa Solar is researching all of these components. At its prototype facilities at the Solucar platform, it tries out many different configurations in an ongoing search for an optimum that secures the utmost efficiency at a competitive cost.
Since 2007, the company has operated an experimental loop comprising four collectors and using thermal oil as the heat-carrying fluid. Potential optical and thermal improvements have been assessed and all the key components of the technology have now been identified. This unique test bench has afforded the company a practical familiarity with the functioning of the plant, and the know-how acquired has been passed on to commercial plants now in the process of construction and operation.
2010 also saw continued operation of the direct steam generation plant. This plant comprises three loops and uses steam as the heat-carrying fluid. By removing the need for an oil-steam exchanger, the technology enhances overall plant efficiency. Yet this direct generation technology requires a far more critical degree of control than thermal oil; the coexistence of two phases of matter in the receiver tube makes for higher instability.
The company is also developing two new types of collector using different materials so as to sidestep commodity price risk.
The Cenit Consolida project is also continuing its research into improving components and transfer fluids. Here, the sought-after qualities are maximum durability and minimum environmental impact.
Trough at the parabolic trough direct steam generation pilot plant, which has been operational since 2009 at the Solucar platform, Seville
The technology underlying CSP plants is now reaching a state of maturity that positions solar power as a strong candidate to supersede conventional thermal plants. However, some major issues still have to be resolved, however. One difficulty is the seasonality of the energy source, meaning sunlight. This means that energy has to be stored in large accumulator systems;
Depending on the type of heat transfer fluid, oil or steam, the energy storage system will be designed accordingly to latent or sensible heat storage.
Steam stores heat in latent form, while oil stores it in sensible form. A hot body (e.g., a heat-carrying fluid) is brought into contact with a cooler liquid, solid or gaseous medium in which the heat is to be stored. As a result, the storage medium heats up. Using the sensible heat of the material, the medium stores energy as and when its temperature rises.
This technology has continued to be tested in 2010 at an experimental plant. The experience provided a highly valuable lesson in operation and optimization for the construction of forthcoming commercial solar plants with attached storage systems, such as the 280 MW Solana plant to be built in Phoenix, Arizona.
Where heat is exchanged with a fluid that, in that same process, undergoes a change of phase - becoming steam - the storage technology makes use of the energy associated with the change of phase of the material or mixture of materials. This technology is at a very early stage, but Abengoa Solar has already taken part in several research projects relating to storage with a change of phase. For example, the Distor project led to a prototype that underwent trials at the Almeria Solar Platform.
Abengoa Solar has also undertaken numerous projects to produce hydrogen using thermal and photovoltaic solar power, which can be used as an energy storage medium.
Molten salt storage pilot plant, operational since 2009 at the Solucar platform, Seville
In partnership with NREL and several North American universities, the company is developing new concentrating photovoltaic concepts. Highlights include a new generation of Fresnel lens photovoltaic concentrators, a semi-static low-concentrating system and other innovative technologies. These concepts are expected to become, in the medium term, the drivers of new photovoltaic systems capable of generating power at a competitive cost.
The company has made a major effort to develop solar trackers for concentrating photovoltaic applications. It has successfully installed several CPV devices at a 400 kW plant at ISFOC (Instituto de Sistemas Fotovoltaicos de Concentración), Ciudad Real, Spain.
Abengoa Solar is planning to build an R&D&I technology center in Seville province, Spain. The center will be the setting for applied research on new materials, photovoltaic cells, and thin-film photovoltaic prototypes and technologies. The knowledge thus generated will lead to proprietary and competitive technologies in support of Abengoa Solar’s future industrialization projects.
The PV laboratory built in 2008 has tested and measured the performance of a wide range of PV systems under real operating. Based on the data thus gathered, the laboratory has developed an experimental software application to analyze the cost of generating energy using different technologies and configurations.
Different photovoltaic systems in the R&D&I area of the Solucar platform, Seville